Chapter 35 | What We Were Given
Time did not stop after Jesus left this earth.
It moved the way it always had—by meals and mornings, by work that needed doing whether the heart was ready or not.
The years did not announce themselves.
They gathered quietly—season after season, harvest after harvest—until what had once felt new began to feel known.
James did not stay home.
But he always came back.
Sometimes it was days. Sometimes longer. He returned with dust on his cloak and fire still in his eyes, and I learned to read the small signs that meant he was safe—his shoulders loose, his voice steady, his hands immediately reaching for me at each joyous reunion.
Even after years, the sight of him at the gate would make my heart race.
I would look up from whatever I held—knife, basket, ledger—and forget it entirely.
More than once I left something half-done in the rows, or set a jar down where it didn’t belong so that I could reach him faster.
He always laughed when I did, like it was something he expected and something he never meant to correct.
Lavi and I made a game of who would spot him first coming up the lane.
Usually it was Lavi—he’d shout, “Abba’s home!
” and I would come running. But sometimes I saw him first, and then we would race for him—Lavi with his long, youthful limbs, always beating me there.
James would laugh and tease me for losing, saying he must be the most loved man in Galilee.
At night, when the house finally quieted, we sat together on the threshold and shared whatever bread remained.
He told me stories then—of what they were teaching, of what John and Matthew were uncovering in their writings, and of the people.
An onion merchant who wept when his hands steadied and he could count his coins again.
A woman who hid her face in her shawl while she listened, then lowered it when she realized no one was turning away from her.
A boy who asked if the kingdom had room for him—and would not leave until James answered him twice.
He spoke of the others, too—of Peter still telling the story of the night he walked on water.
“Even now,” James said softly, laughing once beneath his breath, “I still can barely believe my eyes witnessed such a thing.”
He spoke of doors opening where they had once been shut, of families gathering, of men and women beginning again in places that had only known endings. More and more were believing.
“So the work goes well?” I asked.
He nodded, turning the last of the bread in his hands. “Yes. I think so. There are still those who are afraid of the truth. I imagine there always will be.”
He glanced out toward the rows, “But He told us to carry it—to every place, every generation. And we are.” A small pause. “I hope I am.”
Something in his voice made me look at him more closely.
A single tear slipped down his cheek.
“James?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“I miss Him,” he said at last.
The words were quiet, but they seemed to settle into everything around us.
“It all went so fast,” he went on. “He told us He would leave, again and again. But we did not understand. We heard Him speak it and still could not believe it. Then He was gone—and then He came back—and even then…”
He shook his head slightly. “It was not long.”
I listened, not interrupting.
“I know He is with us,” James said. “I know that. I feel it. We are not alone in this.” His hand tightened slightly around the bread. “But it isn’t the same as walking beside Him. Hearing His voice without wondering. Watching Him teach, pray… laugh.”
Something in me softened at that.
“He wasn’t only our Lord,” James said, quieter now. “He was with us. He taught us. He…” He let out a small, uneven breath. “He was our friend.”
“I still speak to Him,” he added. “And He answers. In ways I never expect.” His gaze dropped for a moment, then lifted again. “But what we had…” He shook his head once. “I don’t know if anyone will ever know it in the same way.”
“Especially you,” I added lightly. “You know… being His favorite and all.”
He laughed—deep and unguarded. “I was only trying to impress you,” he said. “And the boy.”
“If you say so.”
James huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “Yes, well. I’ve learned to let Peter and John settle that argument between themselves.”
“Yes, I may have once heard John refer to himself as The One Jesus Loved.”
James threw his head back and laughed outright. “He’s been saying that for years,” he said. “Every time he does, Peter looks like he’s swallowed something sour. Truth be told… we all do.”
I laughed then too, the sound coming easier than I expected.
“We laugh,” I said after a moment, quieter now. “But it was never only one of you.”
“No,” James said. “Truly, He loved us all. And He still does. All of us. Every man, every woman. He’s our Lord.” He paused, then added more softly, “If I know anything, it’s that He loves us.”
He reached for my hand, his thumb brushing once across my knuckles.
“I love you, James son of Zebedee,” I said.
“And I you, my beautiful wife.”
Then, neither of us spoke for a while.
The night settled in around us, quiet and thick.
“You’re smiling,” he said at last, breaking the silence.
I hadn’t realized I was.
“You don’t sound like I thought you would,” I told him. “When you speak of Him.”
James leaned back against the doorpost, looking out at the darkening rows. “No?”
“No,” I said. “It’s quieter.”
He let out a soft breath. “That’s the part people miss.”
“And you?” I asked.
He glanced at me, something softer in his eyes. “That’s the part I trust.”
~
Lavi flourished under James’s attention in a way that surprised us both. James taught him how to mend nets and how to knot rope that would not slip in a gale. He let Lavi walk beside him instead of behind him, answering questions seriously—even the foolish ones.
“Why do some vines never come back?” Lavi asked one afternoon, turning a snapped tendril between his fingers. “You cut them back, you tend them… and still they die.”
“Some don’t take,” James said. “But most do. They need time—and care.”
Lavi’s brow tightened. “And if they don’t get it?”
James’s gaze flicked to me, then back to him. “Then they break,” he said. “But that’s not the end of them. Not if they’re held to the Vine.”
Lavi looked down at the tendril in his hand, then tossed it aside with a quiet huff. “Doesn’t feel like that when it happens.”
“No,” James said. “It doesn’t.”
Lavi nodded once—not convinced, but thinking.
That night, when Lavi fell asleep with his head on James’s shoulder, James did not move until his arm went numb.
I watched them from across the room, held by a feeling that still wasn’t quite natural to me—family. Not built by blood alone—but by choosing to remain.
~
Sadly, not everything we were given was meant to remain.
We lost our first child in the quiet hours before dawn.
There was no blood at first. No alarm. Only a stillness in my body that felt wrong.
James held me while I cried—not trying to fix it, not offering meaning too quickly. When I finally slept, he stayed awake, his hand on my back, guarding what could not be guarded.
And life went on.
The second time came later, after a season of hope I had tried not to name. This time the pain was sharper—in my body, and in my thinking.
I began to measure myself again.
What had I done wrong?
What rule had I broken?
What obedience had I failed to perform correctly?
James saw it before I spoke it.
One evening, as I sat staring at the vines instead of tending them, he knelt in front of me and took my face in his hands.
“This is not punishment,” he said firmly.
I swallowed. “How do you know?”
“Because I know Him,” James said. “And because I know you. He does not wound His children to teach them to love Him better.”
I pressed my forehead to his shoulder, and he let me weep until the measuring voice inside me went quiet.
After that, we stopped asking why.
We began to ask only how.
How do we love what we are given?
How do we release what we are not?
~
Most days were good.
Days when James returned early and worked the rows beside me, his laughter carrying farther than it had any right to. Days when Lavi crossed between us with baskets of figs and dirt on his sleeves, all long limbs and growing confidence, like nothing bad could happen while we were all in one place.
Once, as the sun sank low and the vineyard hummed with insects, James caught my hand and pulled me into the space between two rows where no one could see us.
“We should not—” I began, out of habit.
He smiled—not teasing this time, but warm. “Just a moment.”
He rested his forehead against mine. “If the Lord calls me tomorrow,” he said quietly, “I want today to have been full.”
I kissed him then—slowly, deliberately—not like a woman afraid of losing something, but like one who knew exactly what she had been given.